RECONSTRUCTION
1865-1877
Main Questions For the Unit
• What was Reconstruction?
• How did Reconstruction change the power and the way the US
government worked?
• How did Reconstruction change life for African Americans?
• How successful was Reconstruction in helping African Americans?
• What things could the country have done differently to make
Reconstruction work better?
Reconstruction: What was it?
• Time: The decade or so after the end of the Civil War 1865-1877
• Place: The states in the South that made up the former Confederacy
• What does the name mean?
• Physically rebuilding or reconstructing the South (why?)
• Symbolically reconstructing the country (joining it back together) after the
Civil War
• Building or constructing a new southern society (why?)
• Issues/questions people had at the time
• What is going to happen to all the former slaves?
• What is going to happen with the former leaders of the Confederacy?
• What is going to happen with Southern state governments who left the
country, how do we bring them back in and make them part of the
government again? Do you treat the defeated South leniently, or harshly?
Early Reconstruction: Presidential
Reconstruction 1865-1866
• Lincoln
• Had a very lenient, forgiving plan for bringing the South back into the country
• Advocated only limited rights for African Americans
• No more slavery anywhere: 13th amendment
• No legal equality
• Voting rights maybe, but only for some African Americans (veterans)
• Lincoln’s plans never put into effect, why?
• Andrew Johnson
• Democrat from the South (Tennessee) became President in 1865
• Very lenient attitude toward the defeated South
• Gave out 13,000 pardons to former Confederate leaders
• Conservative white Southerners were reelected to state governments, and Congress
• Racist laws were passed in the South: Black Codes
• Northerners, and northern Republicans were upset . . . .
Congress Gets Upset Takes Over: Radical (Or
congressional) Reconstruction 1867-1877
• 1866 Congressional Elections
• Radical Republicans gained massive majorities in Congress (2/3rds in both
houses)
• Very upset with Johnson, passed laws to take over Reconstruction
• Tried to have Johnson impeached and removed as President (failed)
• Congressional Reconstruction
• Very harsh and punitive towards the defeated South
• Military Reconstruction Act—sent Union soldiers to occupy the South, suspended
democratic elections and civilian government in the South until new governments
could be created
• Many former members of the Confederacy were banned from voting or holding
political office
• In favor of increased rights for African Americans
• 14th Amendment 1868—made African Americans citizens of the US, gave them full civil
rights (abolished the black codes)
• 15th amendment 1870—gave all African American males the right to vote
• Civil Rights Act of 1875—made it illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of
race in restaurants, theaters, hotels, etc.
African American Political Involvement
• Freed Men or Freedmen=freed former slaves, this was a term used to
refer to pretty much all African Americans during this time
• Many leaders of the African American population during this time were
veterans of the Union Army
• Political Activity of Freedmen in the South
• Helped draft new state constitutions for Southern states
• Got elected to a variety of positions
• 14 black representatives, 2 black senators in US Congress
• Numerous state-level offices: sheriff, judges, state representatives, mayors, etc
• What political party did African Americans belong too at this time????
• What political party did most white southerners belong too?
• Many white southerners were opposed to Reconstruction and black
political involvement, but some were in favor
• Native white southerners—over time racist white southerners called these
people scalawags because they were viewed as traitors to the white South
• Northern white immigrants who came south—over time racist white
southerners called these people carpetbaggers (it has a negative connotation)
Conservative White Resistance to
Reconstruction
• Formation of the Ku Klux Klan
• Racist terrorist organization
• Designed to prevent African American political involvement, and to resist
Reconstruction in the South
• Targeted politically active African Americans, as well as sympathetic whites,
and any supporters of Reconstruction governments
• Informal racism
• Racism persisted in the South
• Discrimination in hiring and firing, wages, giving loans, etc.
• Federal Govt. Response to the KKK
• Force Acts (KKK Acts) of 1870, 1871
• Govt. could suspend habeas corpus, lock suspected Klan members up in jail for
any reason
• Worked: Klan’s power decreased (for a while)
The Plight of the Freedmen
• Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and 13 th Amendment (1865) ended slavery
= good
• Freed slaves still faced a lot of problems
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No education
No money
No tools/animals
Not many skills other than agricultural laborers
• Question: Should the Federal government do something to help freed slaves
get on their feet?
• Free education?
• Free land?
• A small amount of money to move to a new location or start a farm/business?
• Freedmen’s Bureau
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Established during the war to help former slaves
Provided education, job training, etc
Dismantled by President Johnson in 1866, never brought back
Federal govt. did nothing to help former slaves
Sharecropping and Tenant Farming: Slavery
Version 2.0?
• Most former slaves became sharecroppers or tenant farmers
• Tenant farmer: you rent land from a landlord, grow crops on the land sell
them and pay the landlord rent every year
• Problem: the South after the war was very poor, not much money anywhere
• Solution: sharecropping
• Sharecropping: you work for a plantation owner. You live on his/her land,
he/she tells you what to grow. At harvest time you give the owner a share
of the crop and keep a share for yourself as your wages
• Problems: easy to get taken advantage of, former slaves had no money to start
farms, needed tools, seeds, food, had to borrow money (take out a loan) in order
to buy all those things
• Sharecroppers ended up owing a share of their crops to their landlord and
another share to a local merchant or banker to pay off their loans, often they
ended the year no better than they started or in debt
African American Status
• Gained an incredible amount of legal rights
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13th amendment abolished slavery
14th amendment made them citizens (overturned the Dred Scott Case)
15th amendment gave African American males the right to vote
Civil Rights Act of 1875 banned discrimination in certain public places
• But daily life was very similar (or even worse) to that of slavery
• Most became sharecroppers
• Grew and picked cotton all day, everyday
• Lived and worked on the same plantations they had lived on when they were
slaves
• Worked for the same person they worked for when they were slaves
• Stuck in a cycle of poverty, constantly in debt—couldn’t leave
• Relied on landlords and merchants for their survival
• Faced racism and harassment from groups like the KKK
End of Reconstruction: The Election of 1876 and
the Compromise of 1877
• Election of 1876
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Rutherford B. Hayes (R) vs Samuel J. Tilden (D)
Incredibly corrupt and fraudulent
Hayes eventually declared the winner
Democrats very upset
Republicans offered a deal—the compromise of 1877
• Compromise of 1877
• Democrats would recognize Hayes as President
• Republicans would end Reconstruction in the South
Compromise of 1877
Republicans Agreed to do:
Democrats Agreed to do:
End military Reconstruction in the last
few Southern states that still had federal
soldiers (effectively end Reconstruction)
Recognize Hayes as the President
Give the South federal money for internal Not infringe upon the rights of African
improvements and build a federally
Americans (wink)
financed transcontinental railroad in the
South
After Reconstruction: Rollback of African
American Rights 1877-1896
• Once federal soldiers left the South, most liberal Reconstruction
governments were voted out of office and replaced by conservative
governments run by white southerners
• Voting Restrictions
• Literacy tests (grandfather clause)
• Poll taxes
• Harassment and intimidation
• Civil Rights Restrictions
• Civil Rights Cases 1883
• Plessy v. Ferguson 1896
• Beginning of Jim Crow laws and legalized segregation (would last until the
1960’s)